Jim Cutler Quartet - For Real - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

Saxophonist and composer Ingrid Laubrock is at the center of today's Brooklyn avant-garde, and over the past decade has steadily expanded her reach as a composer, devising new ways to inspire, organize, and situate improvised music. Monochromes marks a new chapter in her oeuvre, as she has written and designed richly detailed fixed-media works as a starting point for improvisations. InchIn early 2020, just before the pandemic shut down, she began to record the sonic materials that would serve as the fixed media in the piece. Laubrock asked a handful of close collaborators to realize her scores, which mix conventional and graphic notation with text instructions. In each of the four sections of the uninterrupted work (or monochromes), seriously kinetic, shape-shifting tape pieces unfurl, giving a set of additional improvisers an often unpredictable sonic provocationInch. With Monochromes, Ingrid Laubrock presents an artistic statement that reflects the turbulence of an age gone off the rails.

Jim Cutler Jazz Orchestra - In Progress [COMPACT DISCS] date 08/08/2006

When four musicians of high caliber join forces, one can generally expect favorable results; but only the truly splendid manage to create a musical experience greater than the sum of it's parts. Such is the nature of The Opus Project, founded in 2020 and already rated as one of Canada's most eminent Early Music quartets. On MICHEL DE LA BARRE, the four musicians masterfully perform rarely-heard, unsung suites by the eponymous French flute virtuoso and composer, who broke new ground in Baroque music by merit of being the first to publish solo pieces for his instrument. Zesty yet courtly, refined yet effervescent, these works please at once, not least owing to the lucid and charming interpretation by The Opus Project. A match made in heaven.